From Mahard where Innovations, Money and Power Collie in Silicon Valley, NBN.
This is Bloomberg Technology with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow.
Live from Los Angeles and San Francisco.
This is Bloomberg Technology coming up, cracking down on big tech. The DOJ considering a historic breakup of Google.
More than a dozen US states filing lawsuits against TikTok will be joined by New Jersey's Attorney general.
And we're live from Citadel's Global Macro Conference in New York. A conversation with the CEO, Pengzau is coming up.
First, Let's go to our top story. Shares of alphabet are lower.
Today by one point six percent. That's after the DOJ is weighing a breakup of Google over its monopolistic dominance of online search.
Be goes straight to the report. Who's been all over this?
Bloomberg's Leah Lyle and Leah. You reported this back in August that this might be a consideration and the DOJ would put this to the judge. What's moved on from that reporting, Leah.
Yes, so now we are actually getting into the revenues phase. So last night the Justice Department put its first filing in it actually just lead out a framework of various things that it's thinking about as it is crafting a remedy proposal. They're going to have an official proposal that lays out everything that they want Google to do on November twentieth. But this was just sort of like, here's what we're thinking. These are some of the options. And the big one, of course, was the breakup.
Okay, so let's get into that timeline you mentioned November twenty if we'll bring it up on the screen. The first is the sort of firming of the proposals. Then Google gets a chance next April we'll have a trial, and then by August I think of twenty twenty five, we might get some sort of decision.
Explain all of that, please, Leah. Yes.
So DOJ is going to put its filing in that says this is exactly what we want, you know, whether that's a breakup, data sharing, all those things, and then
Google gets a chance to respond. Over the next couple months, they're going to be doing a lot more discovery again, so they're going to do interviews with Google folks, They're going to get more documents all leading up to this big two week remedy trial that will take place late April in that they're going to have witnesses testify before the judge about what would actually happen to Google's business
if he takes any of these particular actions. And then he has promised that he will issue a decision in August of next year that officially wraps up the case at the trial court, and then Google can start its appeal. The appeal, you know, takes like eighteen months to two years, so we're looking at like August for the sort of like first big deadline, and then we'll go into the appeals and then you know, maybe some of this would be take place like as eighteen months to two years from now.
From then, Let's just go to Google's own response, because the US judge is saying that Google's distribution agreements full close a substantial portion of the general search services market and impair rivals opportunities to compete.
That's the judges take.
Google's take, Is it this is pretty radical right near?
Yes?
I mean Google said what you found was illegal is these specific contracts. So DOJ should be focusing on the contracts and just looking at those.
They say, you.
Know that these these things that the Justice Department is proposing go way beyond those contracts. They're talking about, you know, breaking up our company. They're talking about making us sell off Chrome, which wasn't even really part of the case that much because Google owns Chrome, and so it is pushing back pretty hard on a lot of these remedies,
the breakup in particular. The other thing that they have said is, you know, the Justice Department says that AI is a very big issue here because a lot of the data that Google uses to build its search results is the same data that is used to build its AI products. And the Justice Department says that Google shouldn't sort of get to benefit from the illegal conduct in the search market, in the AI market, and so it
wants to put some limits on that. And Google says, wait a second, we were talking about search, that's not AI. You shouldn't get to like make some limits on us in this completely other different field. So that will be a big issue for the judge to decide next year.
Bloombos lea nil in a late night for you in DC in an early morning too important reporting, but the stocks on the move. Meanwhile, Google CEO sind the pitch I sat down with David Rubinstein for his show Pid to Peer Conversations. He's a reminder about what he had to say about the mounting legal woes and antitrust suits from the DOJ.
We definitely disagree with the ruling, but be still in the middle of the di remedys phase and you know we will appeal. This process will likely take many years, and you know, I'm confident given that you know, VR focused on innovating using technology will do well in the long run.
You can see that full interview tonight on the David Rubinstein Show, Peer to Peer Conversations, nine pm New York Time.
Caroline, let's just dig into anti trust the risk to big tech right now. Jason Bett's and Meerorprice Financial Private wealth Advisor is with us. And look, the stock is down for alphabet but by one point six percent, the biggest move since all October the seventh. It doesn't feel like many people are pricing in a breakup to this extent right now?
Is it a risk? Anti trust issues?
Anti trust issues in general make a very, very an eye catching headline. Certainly, it's what all of us are talking about right now. We see this play out every several years in the technology space and in pharmaceuticals and and energy with the anti trust issues. My feeling is it is it's such a long timeline and there's so
many what ifs that we can speculate on. But as actual investors looking at fundamentals and trying to navigate this, I really don't think there's anything that we should be thinking about doing differently as we approach our investment portfolios.
Well, hold on the stocks down one point six percent in a market that's up, and we showed that timeline, so you get to August the next year, and a hypothetical the judge orders the breakup. Now they'll counter it in court, but let's say it happens.
How do you prepare for that?
I mean, you prepare for it like you prepare for anything else, in my opinion, which is making sure that everything within the investment portfolio looks okay under the hood, and whether you know, regardless of any individual security, you want to make sure that you don't have too much exposure in anyone individual secure already.
Where if the worst case scenario does play out, that it.
Could have somewhat in reparable consequences on your financial future or your wealth other than that, you know, with our firm, we take a really holistic approach and we take a discipline approach. So while this is a it's a very eye catching headline today, it's something that we're going to be talking about, certainly for the next couple of days, if not for the next few weeks.
It's going to be a long process.
And the idea of trying to do anything differently with positioning right now other than making sure that your that your positions are not overweighted or underweighted for that matter, I just don't really see anything else that that that requires material attention right now today.
Well, it's interesting you use the phrase single security, but basically most of the megacap tech names have some form of antitrust scrutiny on them in multiple jurisdictions, and so in aggregate, how much of an anxiety is it then, if you think about it through that lens.
Yeah, I mean, if you're properly diversified, not that much much of anxiety. Because if the worst case scenario is what you see is some sort of shift in leadership within you know, the more specialized technology sectors. So again, it's just at these stages right now, Like I said, we see this time and time again over my last twenty seven years in this industry. Certainly with technology and AI these stakes are higher, but we've seed it in
pharma and energy and technology in the past. Generally speaking, we don't see a whole lot of you know, movement materially within the markets or sometimes within the sectors as a result of these anti trust headlines.
But time will tell.
Time will tell.
The anxiety here and now for the market in many ways is what revenue, what profitability looks.
Like right here, right now for AI.
I know you've been thinking writing a lot on this, Jason, and we actually get another good sign. T SMC's numbers come in and they come in strong. We'll be digging into that.
In a moment.
But what are you getting in terms of a gut check on the valuations of these mega caps?
Yeah?
Absolutely, My gut check is that valuations are stretched.
Now.
Having said that, it's the markets, and the markets do things that we don't expect.
All the time.
But if I look at the valuations and I look at what, in my opinion is kind of a more or less a best case scenario that's playing out in terms of the expectations on future earnings.
It's tough to.
It's tough to see these levels go materially higher without continued breakout positive data. That said, we've had that to your point, and we may see that moving forward. But I would just take it back again to making sure, regardless of what happens moving forward, look under the hood of the portfolio, make sure that you're not too overweighted in any individual names or in any one particular sector.
What about therefore, the macro picture, if you're thinking about anyone sector, Look, it's been impossible not to be overweight and to be extraordinarily heavily weighted towards technology because of the year valuations.
Of these companies.
How do you continue to rebalance, particularly when you're thinking about what interest rates are up to?
Yeah, well, I mean, regardless of interest rates, when we're rebalanced, and obviously we need to you know, we want to do that. I think investors have actually gotten away from that a lot over the last year or two, and that's part of the reason why we've probably seen this
excessive leadership in these megacap technology stocks. But in terms of other septors that I may like in the markets right now, you know, I've said this for about the last six to twelve months that I really like utilities, not because I thought utilities would be out performing the S and P over the last year year to date, but just simply because they were so undervalued and the valuations were delicious, and I think they're still attractive and there's still room for growth there.
I like healthcare because of it.
It's because it has actually underperformed, and I think it might be due for some mean reversion. And to your point, with interest rates, if and when they continue to come down, then that sets the table again for conversation about it. More active mergers and acquisitions market that's good for healthcarecter, especially good for biotech.
You mentioned utilities.
Are you one of many that are now interested in this groundbreaking new field called nuclear energy that could be powering all of the AI infrastructure investment that we'll see.
At this moment, I would say I would say no, not in any above average fashion. We're obviously looking at and considering all the information in the news and the data points, but there's not any particular over over the level over excitement, for lack of a better way to put it, this time concerning that all right?
Oh, thanks to Jason Betts for Ameror Price. Good to catch up and have you here on Bloomberg Technology. Now coming up on the show, two DeepMind scientists and now no Bell Prize winners for their research using artificial intelligence. Fascinating conversation to come. This is Bloomberg Technology to Google
DeepMind scientists and now Nobel Prize winners. They're sharing the twenty twenty four Nobel Prize in Chemistry with US professors for their breakthrough research into proteins, which were developed through AI. Bloomberg's Mark Bergen reported on it and joins us from London. I've never seen you Mark so excited about the intersection of science and technology.
What have you been writing about? Oh, tremendously excited.
This is you know, this has actually come earlier than we expected, but we knew it was something that the co founder and CEO deep Mind, Demis Hassabis, who was one of the award winners. This morning we've reported this to something he's told colleagues.
This has been an ambition of his.
Our colleague from the Bloomberg Opinion side, Primie also and her great book. It just came out, I think she said like he told people he wanted the company to win at least three to five over the course in the next few years. So perhaps this is the first of many.
Let's just go into John Jumper of deep Mind and Demis Haseb.
What is it.
It's the Alpha fold work that they did.
Is that really what's pushed them to this first of what maybe Demis hopes will be many Nobel prizes.
I think so, I mean, this is my understanding of Demosis. Priority has been using AI for science. You know, it's certainly been overshadowed by chat, Gibt and generative AI. And there's some when we've done some reporting about how some of this work has been overshadowed inside of Google and deep Mind right where they have I think for commercial reasons shifted a lot of their research priorities towards Gemini and towards generative AI.
But they obviously I still have as a.
Team working on on Alpha Fold. They've commercialized or trying to commercialize that rather with this new alphabet company Isomorphic Labs that Demis and his spare time also runs.
And that's when we said.
They did a press conference Demis and John Jumper this afternoon about this prize, and you know, one of the things they talked about was just was the continued work around drug discovery.
Elsewhere in Nobel Prize winners, Jeffrey Hinton won the prize for physics his work on neural nets, and in a presser he threw a bit of shade listen to this.
So I was particularly fortunate to have many very clever students, much cleverer than me, who actually made things work. They've gone on to do great things. I'm particularly proud of the fact that one of my students fired Sam Oltman.
Particularly proud that one of his students fired Sam Outman. You've got a free pass. Just your comment on that, Mark.
I mean, you know, I guess the karma.
It would be a great luxury to be one of the most senior respected scientists in your field, pretty much quite blancheous anything.
But even then, I think, I mean, he was at Google.
He has fascinating history, right he left left Google and talked about kind of gave a really adamant warning about some of the dangers and risks of AI. My sense is that, and I haven't actually spoken the jeff hinted about this, but like he sees Demis Hasibus as a scientist and maybe a certainly researcher, some researchers in the field as being a scientist and some being executives and CEOs, and maybe putting that to Camp and that's you know,
we are. Google obviously wants to marry those both those worlds, and we'll see there's always going to be tension between those two.
Obviously, AI really cleaning up on these Nobel Prizes, and of course Jeffrey Hinton was mentioning about Elias at Skiver, of course in his role within the Sam Altman Auster matt.
Berg and we thank you so much. Also in the AI space, let's talk about it.
Some Alman's Open Ai being accused by even Mask of harassment in a legal fight that's unfolding as a startup ways a plan to shift to a for profit business model. Musk filed a complaint in August claiming that open AI's co founders manipulated him into investing in the startup, which
at the start was a nonprofit. Numbers Multinag now joins us to explain that back and forth here because there have been other legal wranglings between en Or Musk and open Ai and open AI now saying, look, you're harassing us.
Yes, you know, open AI and Musk are now added again. This time open AI is lashing back at Musk's lawsuit which was fired in August, and saying, you know this is harassment. You know, we've been accused of corruption and racketeering here. And what they're seeing is that actually Musk is doing this to gain a competitive advantage with this XAI.
So they're saying we're being.
Harris chair and they've asked a judge actually to throw out this lawsuit. So yeah, this sort of saga continues, and we'll have to see what happens in terms of whether this suit survives in quote or not.
Multi So open AI is accusing Elon Mask of harassment, and Elon Musk is saying that this is a textbook tale of altruism versus greed. The bit that I'm struggling with is what is Elon Musk trying to achieve? What is his end goal in the suits that he is filing against open ai.
God.
So what he says is he feels like he's been deceived, and you know, his lawsuit talked about deceit of Shakespeare in proportions. So I think he appears to be hurt here and says I've been deceived. You know, you manipulated me into investing here. You started off with this founding mission of being this you know, company that would benefit human good and here you are now sort of shifting to this for profit model. So it definitely seems like he appears hurt in seat of the words that are
being used in the lawsuit. And what openI says is, Hey, you're just using legal warfare here to hurt us in benefit.
Your own company.
Because this new lawsuit which was filing August, Open thee I says, is adding on some extra more intense claim such as racketeering and corruption. So yeah, so Open thee Eye says, you know you're just doing this for your own benefit and trying to court us and using the court system to basically get.
Back at us.
Bloomberg's multi Nayek, thank you very much. Time now for AI and action.
Let's bring in pre Cyprosord, co founder and general partner of the newly founded venture firm Touring Capital, for a take on how to identify the best industries for AI investment and prayer. A lot of my work has been looking at a wide range of let's say tech sector subdivisions where AI is having an impact.
It can be anything from.
Software to hardware, industrial, ev, robotics, healthcare. And right now everyone in anyone is slapping a sticker on themselves saying we are somehow AI adjacent. But that can be an opportunity for you. You've setting yourselves up to invest where do you start.
Right? Right?
Definitely, Actually thank you for mentioning that. So you know, our thesis at touring is to really partner with entrepreneurs who are building AI enabled aidjacent software that really solves real world problems and enhancas productivity across different industries. But you know the answer is, how do you actually choose
which industries that are so ripe for AI? And we typically look for industries that are general laggards and sort of that initial wave of digital transformation and who in a lot of cases still rely on pen, paper and excel, and we think those are the opportunities for the most advancement, at least the low hanging fruit that AI can initially tell.
Looking at some of the startups that you've already invested in, we've got your put Photio up for us. Now, Pixis that's marketing, de Looper, that's financial services, car dealership with NUMA. I can understand why that's perhaps slow to pick up on AI. But why do you feel that these areas are.
Right for disruption from artificial intelligence?
Yeah, no, that's a great question. So we typically use a framework when we think of whether a particular vertical or an industry is right for AI transformation. The first thing that we look for is a large total addressable market, an actual sort of friction or pain point that's really
experienced in that market. And then we again prefer relatively old school industries who still rely on pen, paper and excel for the most part, but are now sort of forced to deal head on with the tailwinds from AI adoption in order to actually remain competitive in that industry. And lastly, we look for sort of immediate ROI that's delivered from the product to the end user in that market,
creating sort of this strong propensity to pay. And I always say, the best opportunities an AI often seem niche to the industry outsider, but are sort of life changing to that end user. And you know, as you pointed out, yeah, as you pointed out, our investment in Numa is sort of a great example of all of this. It's an AI communication platform that's sort of purpose built for service professionals like car dealerships to use.
Really really quick, not just a media ROI. But I kind of find that companies are shrinking. You can have a five or ten person operation that's doing well. Would you invest there.
A five or ten person company?
You mean a start? Yeah, yeah, I have with serious money. Yeah, yeah, absolutely So.
We typically are touring invest in Series B companies, so companies in that early inflection growth point where you have about three to ten million of revenues, right, so you know, in a lot of cases it can be companies as small as call it, fifteen employees, twenty employees.
So for sure, absolutely we're.
Going to have to wrap it up. I'm afraid.
Pria Cyprisad, thank you so much for your time. Co founder and general partner at Touring Capital. Welcome back to Blue Meg Technology. I'm Caroline Hyde in Los Angeles.
And Amed Lovelow in San Francisco.
A quick check in on the markets we are i'd say modestly higher and technology is kind of leading the way CPI data is what we're all waiting for. Semiconductors doing well the names you'd expect, and that makes alphabet the parent of Google's decline all the more pronounced. We've gone big on that story in the show the preliminary proposal of the DOJ to a judge that one option is to break up Google in the context of antitrust.
Will continue to track it, and as we said, it will be over a number of months that that process plays out. Another name that I'm looking at is Tesla. Earlier today, I broke a story with my colleague Dana Holr and Karra Coulson that one of the things that Elon Musk will talk about at we robot the Robotaxi event is the pathway for FSD to be used with semi truck. And if you look at that kind of ten am Eastern time mark, the start went from negative
to positive territory. I think there's a lot of interest around that story about the future of semi truck.
But we're waiting what are we going to get.
We're going to get a purpose built robotaxi of some description that is the markets if you're just joining us elsewhere, let's turn our attention to New York where the Citadel Securities Global Macro Conference is underway. Bloombergsh and Ali Bassak is with Citadel's security CEO, Pengjau.
Listening.
Through that are already had in many of these ins listens. So I think we will see at least for this next period an increased adoption of using AI as productivity
of tools. Internally, we're still some distance away both farm and technological perspective, but also importantly if a regulation and even legal perspective, and you have further clarity and perhaps wee a few of these cases now would test our court system and regulatory system in term of what is going to be okay, what is going to be acceptable when it comes down to actually bringing in generative via technology all the way through to the user. We're still some distance away from them.
I want to get into what would kind of break down those limitations, what it would unlock. But before that, you mentioned open AI. Another thing about a year ago is many financial companies would say we are hesitant to work with a third party because of the liability, because of the risks, and more and more you've seen more financial services companies work with open ai, work with the anthropic what have you? Are you working with open ai and other players as well.
We use we partner with most of the top providers open ai, you know, I think from our perspective, it's they've been valuable partners. And then the other part of this is it's crucially important for us to be informed on the cutting edge, even if not every upgrade and every release every week is necessarily going to lead to real changes for us internally, we want to be on that releational We want to be examining that. We want
to stay up today. What is becoming possible and that's moving every week, that's moving every week.
What is becoming possible?
What does working with open ai do for you that you wouldn't have been able to do before.
I think some of the there's a lot of different examples. I think some of the key workflows that was viewed as uniquely possible if you had a lot of certain type of talent are now being transferred from a heavily high value, human labor intensive part of the workflow to
being heavily optimals automated. Even things like debugging right, things like hey cold reviews, Those were things that consume the very large amount of high value developer resources today that's being somewhat replaced even in core areas of our model building. I'm not going to get into a level of details. There's a certain part of the workflow that consumes a lot of our most valuable researcher time are also becoming
a much more automated. So again, I come back from the perspective, less revolutionary change from the product offering perspective, but more of a change from a productivity perspective. If I can get if I can take this group of thirty of the brightest, smartest, most innovative researchers in capital market and get twenty percent of activity getting out of these thirty, that's like hiring six international math on empirical medalists just like that, and I'll do that every day.
Incredible.
So what does this mean in terms of your performance as a company. You know that's been rumored forever that Citadel Securities would seek an IPO at some juncture, And so is this helping you kind of grow your margins much much faster into a moment like that?
So there's two things. So well, first of all, we'll make sure Bloomberg is well informed if we ever seriously a considered ipel are you seriously considering no, and you all will read it Bloomberg first, I'm sure, and putting that aside, I like how you slip that in there, But putting that aside, I think it goes in both ways. I think for companies, there's certainly I would say there's a risk for firms to not stay with the speed
of innovation, and it's not necessarily generative. Ass companies are spending time and resources in figuring out how they can leverage more automation and technology in increasing their productivity to stay on that frontier, right, And the firms that cannot keep up in doing that, not only will they not win,
they will lose. Okay, And I think the top firms in every field, including our field, are spending a really high quality time being very intentional in thinking about where they're going to allocate their resources to keep up with
that innovation. At the same time, I also believe firms like ourselves on the other end of this will win based on our understanding of the market, Based on our understanding, yet again, on what are the most important and most valuable problems our clients want to solve and that market want to solve. We are building better tools, but those better tools will not be nearly valuable enough unless we
use them to solve the most valuable problems. And we do need those humans going back to that to be all things AI.
We've blue mentioned Ali, Bassek and Beans out of citydel securities.
Ed studying the market.
All right, let's get some more news in today's talking tech and first up, social media platform X has been ordered to release old data from twenty twenty two on fake users that Elon Musk tried to use to back out of the deal to buy Twitter. A Delaware judge has ordered X to file unredacted versions of several documents, as well as some Slack messages.
Plus.
Shares of chip maker TSMC higher today after the company posted a better than expected thirty nine percent rise in quarterly revenue. The main chip maker to envis year and Apple reported September quarter sales of twenty three point six billion dollars, calling analyst concerns that AI spending is tapering off, and Nvidio CEO Jensen Jang says the future of AI
will be in services that can quote reason. Speaking on a podcast hosted by arm Holding CEO Rene hass Huang says next gent tools will be able to respond to queries by searching and reflecting on their own conclusions, but prefaces that it all requires.
The cost of computing to come down.
First, Caroline coming up the search for more energy maybe in space. We speak with the co found Robin hood Age that about his new company. He for Flux, that's next to Bloomberg Technology. TikTok It has been sued by over a dozen states for allegedly deceiving users about its safety for children and for using addictive features to keep kids on the platform longer to maximize profits. One of those states is New Jersey, As Attorney General Matt Platkin
joins US now for more. Attorney General, why pick this particular fight with TikTok It's already being sued by the FEDS for child privacy issues. It might even be banned in the United States. Tell us the underlying reason for pursuing.
This, Well, we know we're facing a youth mental health crisis in this country, and unfortunately New Jersey is no exception. And as we have shown in a number of actions, we know that social media companies have knowingly targeted our youth in ways that have damaged their mental health and caused them real harm. And then, to make matters worse, they've told the public that these products are safe when
they themselves know they are not. So the lawsuits that New Jersey and several other states filed yesterday are meaning different than the lawsuit that you reference that the Department.
Of Justices filed.
It's for violation of our state consumer laws for again misleading the public about the safety of their products and deliberately treating our youngest residents as nothing more than commodities.
Let's talk about what's materially different from October twenty fourth last year, when New Jersey and other states also sued Meta, the parent company of Instagram or Facebook, again to protect children, mental health and the like.
How are the two actions different. What do you see in particular with TikTok.
Well, legally, they're distinct lawsuits, and these investigations have been underway for some time, and investigations of these kinds take time.
But as a general matter, we know that social media companies like Meta and TikTok have targeted our youth, have deliberately taken steps to keep our youth on their platforms for long periods of time, have implemented features like TikTok has with respect to body image, features that allow you to put yourself on TikTok as if you had plastic surgery or extensive makeup that cause real harm to kids' mental health. That's created body dysmorphia crises and mental health crises,
particularly amongst young girls. And so in that sense, the lawsuits are similar in that you see similar patterns across them, but they are distinct lawsuits and Meta because the Department of Justice had not filed a federal claim about children's privacy in Meta, we filed a claim there under that law, whereas the Department of Justice, as you noted, had stepped in on TikTok, so we did not need.
To file a federal claim.
But otherwise there are some similarities across the two complaints.
Well to any general plat kid forgive me for many of you'll constituents that that's a fair question.
What's the point.
There is a federal suit against TikTok, there's a legislative effort to get it banned in this country, and you've chosen a long path with this specific initiative, Why do it if there are all those others already in place, some of which have analogous skulls with what you're trying to achieve.
Well, the federal lawsuit plain and simple covers different conduct. Here. We're talking about deliberately misleading the public about the safety of their products, about telling people that their product is safe when they know it's not, when the United States Surgeon General has said publicly it's not that they should have a warning label on it. And kids are using TikTok in particular, for hours and hours a day, when we know just a few hours of TikTok a day
can cause significant mental health harms to our kids. Now, I'm the state's attorney general. I'm the chief law enforcement officer for nine point three million people. My job is to keep them safe. And when I see a company peddling a product targeting our youngest residents, treating them for nothing more than dollar signs, and putting profit ahead of their mental health, then I have an obligation to step in and protect them. And that's what this lawsuit and the lawsuit against Meta is doing.
Mister Patkin. If this proceeds and goes before a jury.
How will you show that what TikTok does is intentional, that it is malicious in your accusation that they are profiting off young users.
Well, I'm not going to speak to what we'd eventually show at a trial, but I think our complaint lays out very clearly what TikTok knew and the harms that their products have caused.
Including the.
Result is that we have essentially compulsive users of TikTok products ages thirteen to seventeen throughout our state and throughout this country, and we know at the same time we're experiencing a massive spike in mental health challenges for our youths, suicidal, ideation, depression, anxiety, all up at historic levels. So we're very confident in
the case that we've brought against TikTok. We obviously wouldn't bring a lawsuit like this if we didn't feel very confident in our case and if we weren't prepared to take on what is as with Meta, one of the largest companies in the world. And my message is simple, we're ready for that fight.
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, thank you very much for your time. The answer to the world's energy problems may be in space. A for Flux is a new company with the aims of harnessing solar energy using lasers and low Earth orbit satellites in order to deliver renewable globally. CEO by Jubart joins us in San Francisco for more. It's out of science fiction, but you can kind of see it. So explain the basics of the technology, how this would work.
Yeah, so thanks for having me on. Like I said, the name of the company is Ether or Flux, and the mission is to take this idea of space solar power, which is an old NASA Department of Energy idea, and make it a real life thing. And the basic concept is you collect solar power and orbit and by doing so you're able to be met down to locations virtually globally, and by doing so address a lot of the limitations of renewable energy and the INNERMITZI.
To address what the audience might be wondering. I know you as one of the co founders of Robin Hoods. Your background, though, is in physics. You have a family tie to NASA. How did this company come about?
Yeah, so, my love of physics and space industry actually goes back really long.
So I grew up with my.
Dad studying the United States. He worked at NASA as when I was a kid, and I studied physics and math at Stanford, And so I've kind of had a love of the space industry from childhood and through building robinhood. The passion for looking for commercial opportunities in space, how can we make space technology useful for people on Earth has kind of been a love of mine for a long time, and in particular asking the question about how can we bring natural resources from space down to Earth?
And I think energy is one of the natural choices for that bringing it.
Down from space to Earth.
You said, beam it down, like get into the nity and gritty, how does one beam it down?
Yeah, So the way that we're going to be transferring power from space to Earth is actually using a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, and each one collects power and then uses infrared lasers to find a ground station and actually transmit power down to it in the same way that you know you collect solar power with solar power traditional panels. With this, you'll have a bespoke ground station that forms a connection with a satellite and
receives power from space. So where companies like SpaceX have launched a constellation of communications satellites, this would be a constellation of energy satellites.
You're financially backing this by you obviously, with the help of a very successful startup you were co CEO of previously. What is the funding that will be necessary, who will you bring on board?
How much will this cost?
So right now the company is funded by me, but as we grow the company, you know, we're talking about building a large number of satellites, so it'll take more capital to do that. In terms of the scaling of the business. One of the opportunities that we're looking at in the near term is going to be how can we solve problems that are real on planet Earth today? And the stuff that we're focusing on is how can we deliver power to places that are either contested or
difficult to reach. So think military applications like for deployed bases or things like remote mining applications.
Got to ask, sounds amazing, but are we talking theoretical physics or are we talking applied physics?
Yeah, So this was one of the core ideas behind this approach, which is we view this as a primarily an engineering and economics problem, not a hard science problem. So this is not the sort of company where we're looking to make a breakthrough in science, but rather, how can we take technologies that exist today, where even other industries are maturing them, and use those technologies to create something that can happen today.
You will need a launch provider to put you to all bit.
What is your relationship with SpaceX, rocket Lab the other providers out there?
Yeah, so we're talking to launch providers right now. We're still in the early stages. We're talking to SpaceX, as you mentioned, and we're targeting a launch of our first mission, which we'll aim to demonstrate this capability Q four of next year, Q one the year after.
Hey for flux, Sorry car go ahead.
Great to have some time with them.
I'm just envisaging lasers beaming down from space Infra red.
We appreciate it. Thank you for explaining you this edition of Bloomberg Technology.
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You do not want to miss that. Just stunning lineup of guests.
Pretty stunning lineup of guests Today's show as well, recap it on the podcast. You know exactly where to find it online, Apple, Spotify, iHeart, and all of the Bloomberg platforms. The team is out in La right now. I've got to catch a flight and join them. A few big days of shows to come. This is Bloomberg Technology.
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